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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Host a web page on the web, home OSX mac

4C4Blessed - Nov 10, 2007 - 8:41 pm

Hello. the question is pretty simple. Let's hope the answer is also simple.
I've got 4 macs - and each one running a slightly different OS. 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5. In other words, I will use which ever one I "should" use to get the job done in the simplest way. They're all at my disposal to:

Host a web site on the real internet, from my home mac. As I understand, apache is built in. And as I also understand, you can switch it on by enabling personal web sharing. Great! I can then display my own web page to myself on my own local machine. Now, I want people from the real internet to be able to load it as well.

I have a cable modem/router. It's the usual kind that you get from AT&T. It has the usual settings that you can change, including a firewall, etc. It's pretty well standard from what I can see.

I have a domain name for the website netralio.com . Currently it's on a real web server, and gets only developer traffic, very little. But I want to bring it on my own mac and save some monthly hosting charges.

1. How do I "Connect" the domain name to resolve to my home mac? What do I enter for "DNS 1" and "DNS 2" at the registrar company's settings page wherte I bought the domain name? Currently, "DNS 1" and 2 point to my web hosting company's servers (the thing I want to remove from the equation).

2. Do I need to set up any kind of DNS program on my mac?

3. What's the usual changes that one has to do to a typical cable modem+router from a typical ISP (Such as AT&T UVerse Cable) for this to happen? - What if I have a static IP from the ISP? What if I have a dynamic IP which changes now and again? I'm fairly sure it's dynamc, and once in a while the IP assigned to me changes - like for example when I have to reboot the cable modem.

4. As a small test, my local mac is serving the web page to itself "just fine", by the way. I just want people from the internet to be able to load my web page also, by typing in the Domain Name, and having it physically served from and stored on one of my four home macs. I can move the web page to any of the four latest OSX versions if need be, what ever will work best.

Thank you so much in advance!

ScottW - Nov 12, 2007 - 11:04 am

Barron,

I will keep this as simple as I can for you. But, if I don't get detailed enough, feel free to reply back for any clarification - and of course let me know how it works for you.

1) DNS

You will need DNS managed for your domain, which will no longer be provided by your hosting company, once you move from them (as you mention). I see that your domain is with GoDaddy, which is good, as they provide a free DNS service with your domain, so no additional cost in that. You just need to log into your GoDaddy account, and following their instructions on using their DNS service to direct your domain. Your nameserver will be what GoDaddy provides you, and they will provide you with a web GUI to enter your name records and what not.

2) Dynamic External IP

Since your external public IP address is dynamic, you will want to use a dynamic DNS service to manage this side of things for you. The good news, this is free as well. GoDaddy might provide a Dynamic DNS feature, you might check with their service offering, but I am not aware of it but haven't researched it either.

Go to DynDNS.org and register for an account and setup a dynamic DNS account for netralio.any-old-domain-they-offer.com. For now, point this to your external dynamic IP address.

Many Internet routers provide built-in functionality for DynDNS services. You can log into your router and see if it provides this feature. If it does, you will need to to enter your hostname that you registered with DynDNS, your user account and password. You should be done at that point. Look for "DDNS" on your Router if you don't see the word "Dynamic".

If your router does not provide such a feature, you will need to download a client for your Mac to provide this functionality. Several clients are available through the DynDNS website for Mac.

3) Router Setup

If the machine serving your web site is on 192.168.1.100, you will want to setup Port Forwarding to forward port 80 to port 80 on 192.168.1.100. Port 80 is the standard HTTP protocol.

4) Domain Setup w/ Dynamic Address

Last, but not the least of, you need to setup one or more domain name records, in your case, with GoDaddy DNS, and add "www.netralio.com" as a CNAME record for netralio.your-dynamic-domain.com. If you want http://netralio.com to work as well, you will want to setup a record for just "netralio.com" to be a CNAME for "netralio.your-dynamic-domain.com" as well.

Once you have all this in place, it should work without any issues.

If you have any questions or need clarification or more details, let me know. Let me know how it works out for you either way.

If you do any development on your domain, and want a more "hosted" platform setup, you can download MAMP, which provides a default install of phpmyadmin, mysql, php 4 & 5, and all sorts of other apache features without messing with your default Mac install. MAMP will typically run on a higher port, like 8000. You can leave it at 8000, or stop your built-in apache setup, and run MAMP on 80. If you want to leave it at 8000, you can do that, just setup port forwarding on your router to forward 80 to 8000 on 192.168.1.100 (or whatever your internal IP is for the machine running MAMP).

You will want to make sure you internal address is static on the machine that is doing the web serving, as your router won't typically support it with port forwarding.

Scott

Scott

4C4Blessed - Nov 15, 2007 - 12:03 am

Thank you! Wow, that a response. That's really great info. Will be trying all that out shortly. And thanks for going above and beyond by providing the additional info about MAMP, you knew exactly where I was going with this - again very useful. Thanks again! One day I'll contribute to your site

ScottW - Nov 15, 2007 - 2:59 pm

Thanks. Glad I could be of help. I will go ahead and close the ticket, but if you need further help, just reopen it up and reply.

Thanks.

Scott

TechSupport - Jan 5, 2008 - 3:10 pm

We apologize for not being able to resolve the issue you asked of us. It is the absolute worst case scenario for us to do this. In our review of why this happens, it generally is related to either the particular issue being addressed or frequently, incomplete or incorrect information provided. We hope by moving your request to the public forums that you will be able to get a solution without leaving you empty handed.

Your ticket has been closed with our support team. Your request has just been posted to Mac OS X System & Mac Software and is available for your viewing at:

http://macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=297539

Again, thank you for using Macosx.com. We hope you will consider using us again in the future.

4C4Blessed - Jan 5, 2008 - 3:39 pm

Hello Scott, I'm Back

I just need a couple minor clarifications...I think.

To make this easier, I'm going to spell out what I did, in the order I did it in. I didn't exactly do everything in the order that you listed it in...

1. First, I plugged up my old G3 desktop, running 10.2.8 to the router (through a harmless lil ethernet switch). Attempted to change the default apache page, when I learned that Apache is set to look at "/Library/WebServer/Documents" which caused me to get a permissions error when trying to edit that default page. After some wrestling with sudo pico in the Terminal, I managed to edit the httpd.conf file to look (in my mind, more appropriately so) at /MyUsername/Sites/ which seems like an easier place to edit and work on web page files. (Did I open up a security hole?) I dropped a test page in there and was able to load my own test page successfully from other Macs on the LAN just by typing the (internal) IP address of the server machine. Success!

2. Logged into my home router, which happens to be a Lynksis. Was able to set up Port Forwarding to point web port 80 to my G3 server. Was then able to give my "outside IP" to a friend across the internet, and they were also able to load my test page! After that, went on to forward FTP and DNS ports as well in the router to point to that G3 server, for the fun of it. Everything still working. More success! Yay!

3. Changed my G3 server's Network settings from DHCP to Manual. Kept the same credentials, just entered them manually. Then went over to the router and told it to manually keep this machine set - I provided the router with the G3's MAC address and IP address, so the G3 server's internal IP address should never change if I have to restart it or the topology at home changes. In theory. Tested everything again from the internet, and the friend was still able to load my test page. So far, so good, Success!

4. Went over to DynDNS.org and registered my home's external IP. Wrote down my username and password I created with them. Set up a record with them that says: Hostname: netralio.boldlygoingnowhere.org , Service: Host , and Details: 75.53.155.221 (my home's current IP). Asked my friend across the internet to load netralio.boldlygoingnowhere.org and, Success! The test page loads again.

5. Went into my router again, under the DDNS tab, and I entered my DynDNS username, password, and netralio.boldlygoingnowhere.org as the hostname. Clicked "Connect". It sat there saying "Connecting to server...PLEASE WAIT". it sat like this for about an hour. I eventually refreshed the router page, and the status now says "Abusive Update".
Consequently, I downloaded dyndns-setup-mac.dmg from DynDNS and thought I would try this step using software instead of the home router. Unfortunately, that application will not run on 10.2.8 apparently.

6. Logged into godaddy.com and went into "Total DNS Control" manager. On that screen, I added 2 CNAME records. One that says Host: www.netralio.com points to: netralio.boldlygoingnowhere.org and a second record that states Host: netralio.com (without the www), also pointing to the same netralio.boldlygoingnowhere.org. It gave me a Success result.

7. Also in Godaddy, I removed the old DNS server entries which represented my old server. I have no idea what to put there now. I changed it to "Default name servers" for a while, but their help files say this option is only for when you are hosting your site on their servers. Subsequently, loading www.netralio.com now brings up a godaddy spam page.

So basically steps 5 and 7 failed, and I'm not able to load netralio.com or www.netralio.com. Any further suggestions? THANKS!

4C4Blessed - Jan 5, 2008 - 4:38 pm

Additional tinkering since my last post:

Managed to download an old version of DynDNS Updater software from ZDNET which is compatible with 10.2.8. Installed it, and entered my DynDNS user/pass. It seemed to retrieve some info. Clicked the "Active" checkboxes. Restarted the machine, as per instructions provided with the application.

Now I am able to load www.netralio.com and netralio.com. I have not changed anything on the router (the built in DDNS still seems to be broken, i suppose? I still get that same error I mentioned in step 5 above. I'd much rather let the router do more DDNS "work" and let the mac do less DDNS "work"...) Also did not touch any settings on Godaddy since my last post. Apparently, their own name servers are populated in the fields-the name servers which they say were for use with their own hosting plans only.... Does that seem right? Am I good to go or does it sound like something about to break? Thanks

4C4Blessed - Jan 5, 2008 - 8:16 pm

Additional tinkering since my last post:

Managed to download an old version of DynDNS Updater software from ZDNET which is compatible with 10.2.8. Installed it, and entered my DynDNS user/pass. It seemed to retrieve some info. Clicked the "Active" checkboxes. Restarted the machine, as per instructions provided with the application.

Now I am able to load www.netralio.com and netralio.com. I have not changed anything on the router (the built in DDNS still seems to be broken, i suppose? I still get that same error I mentioned in step 5 above. I'd much rather let the router do more DDNS "work" and let the mac do less DDNS "work"...) Also did not touch any settings on Godaddy since my last post. Apparently, their own name servers are populated in the fields-the name servers which they say were for use with their own hosting plans only.... Does that seem right? Am I good to go or does it sound like something about to break? Thanks